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"My father sent the only warrior who can carve her way back out if the Quarter becomes overrun," Izzy fired back, not the least bit cowed by the warning in the archangel’s tone. She tossed a flash drive onto the desk. "Try to keep up. Dad's warriors pulled a skirm off the port wall alive last night, which was gross. Do you know what those things smell like? Anyway. They got it talking before Micah stabbed it with his sgian dubh. You want the headline or the whole sad story?"

Abraxos exhaled, low and rough, because her presence here meant something. He already had a guess about what. Her father had been holding the waterline at the port for weeks now. The Vampire King and his Dark Warriors had dug in against whatever was trying to come ashore. Zander didn't send his sharpest blade out at dawn to deliver pleasantries. If Izzy was standing in Sarah's ruined shop with demon blood still drying under her nails and a flash drive, it didn’t bode well for them.

"Give us the headline. We can go from there," he told her as he ran a hand through his hair.

"Lucifer's gassed." She let that sit for half a second, watching the angels in the room with the satisfaction of a kid who'd brought home the only A in class. "Clawing his way topside cost him. Cracking the Old Ones loose is draining him even more. He's not gathering power or recovering right now. He's hemorrhaging it. He’s scraping the bottom of the tank with every cheap little hellhound he throws at this city. He can't pull off the big swings anymore. Dad thinks we've got a window. A short, ugly one."

The thinking in the room rearranged around that information exactly like a battlefield rearranges when you learn the enemy's out of arrows. He felt the shift. Everyone was hoping for the chance to put a blade in a problem that had been a thorn in their sides. Unfortunately, right behind that came the drop. He'd lived too long to take good news at face value. When you did it, it inevitably bit you in the ass.

"A cornered demon like Lucifer isn’t going to be easy, no matter how weak," he warned them. Despite his best efforts, he was still watching Sarah more than he should have. "He’ll fight faster and dirtier. And he’ll quit being careful. If Lucifer's running out of power, he’s going to stop chipping at the prison from outside. And look for a key instead. Something that can open or close those seals from the inside without him having to spend a drop of the power he doesn't have."

Sarah froze, hunched over her maps, and didn't look up. She had no need to, because everyone in her ruined shop had arrived at the same conclusion at once. Her finger drifted over the brand on her palm, and she finally lifted her head in his direction.

"He goes looking for a Guardian," Amelia said, bringing light to the fact none of them wanted to acknowledge. She moved to put herself a half-step closer to Sarah, witch to witch. It was a small, fierce gesture that told him how much she cared about Sarah.

"Lucky me." Sarah's laugh had no mirth in it. She straightened up, pressed her branded hand flat to the desk on top of the map, and met Camael's stare without flinching. Abraxos had watched seasoned warriors fail to meet Camael’s gaze like that.

"We aren't wasting this window feeling sorry for me,” Sarah insisted. “If he's weak, that's the best news anyone's brought through that hole in my wall all night. Izzy, I need everything that skirm gave up. Camael, I need your sharpest angels laying wards on my dead spots before sundown. And I need someone to find me a chicory coffee and a beignet because I am running on fumes and spite. Not great for a war council hoping to stop Lucifer."

Izzy barked a laugh and dropped into the chair across the desk as if she'd been invited. "Oh, I like her. Can we keep her? Wings, can we keep her?"

"She's not a stray," Abraxos shot back, sharper than the joke deserved. The whole room heard it. Izzy's eyes flicked from him to Sarah and back. She’d seen his soft spot and was going to tease him endlessly.

"You're doing the thing." Izzy’s tone was delighted as she pointed at him without looking away from Sarah. "You’re hovering. My dad does it to my mom when she's bleeding. It's sweet, and it's going to get you gutted. You can't watch the door and her at the same time. Right now, big guy, you’re not watching the door."

She wasn't wrong, and that was the worst of it. Abraxos had stood there while the Vampire King's daughter walked in over broken glass. He hadn't so much as lifted a hand. He'd been too busy memorizing the stubborn line of a mortal woman's jaw, which was a hell of a thing for a warrior of his vintage to admit. Even to himself. Thousands of years of war, and a mortal bookshop owner had undone him without even trying.

If Araton or Ayil had been there, they'd never have let Abraxos live it down. They would have been right to torment him for it. Mainly because when his brothers found their mates, Abraxos gave them holy hell about it. He’d ridden them mercilessly for weeks. At the time, he hadn't understood how two warriors who'd survived a thousand battlefields could be brought low by a single female.

Now he knew better. And it sat in his chest like a blade he couldn't pull free. The absence of his brothers’ needling was its own small ache, because it was a reminder that he'd traded his brothers' flank to be there, watching over Sarah instead. He hadn't decided yet whether he'd do it again. That uncertainty bothered him more than he wanted to examine.

"Don't go spreading rumors," he told Izzy, who never lost her grin no matter how flat his tone went. "That's how people get hurt." He shifted his stance, planting himself between the broken window and the women like the wreckage might come at them twice. "Your call, Camael. We dig in here, or we keep dragging the most wanted woman in the realm across a city that just caught her scent?"

Camael was quiet long enough for the broken building to fill the gap with small noises. To distract himself, Abraxos looked over Sarah's maps, then at Sarah herself. His attention finished on the brand she was no longer bothering to hide. There was no way to tell if she was as terrified as he was for her. When in the hell had he become this kind of ninny? Worrying over the welfare of a single female was as foreign to him as what it might be like to draw a mortal breath.

"We need to fortify the store. Make it a base here in the Quarter," Camael finally said into the silence. The decision dropped into the room like a stone into still water. "But when we're not out on patrol or handling business, everybody's back at the mansion."

He turned, finding Amelia first. "Amelia, you stay and anchor the wards with the Guardian." Then his attention swung to Izzy. "Izzy, let your father know about this base. I want his intel confirmed before I commit one blade to going on offense."

His black gaze cut to Abraxos next, and there was something in it that wasn't entirely from his position as the commanding angel. It was something closer to understanding. "I want you to hold this position until it’s secure, since leaving doesn't seem to be a skill you've got tonight."

"Yes, sir." Abraxos didn't argue. He didn't even bristle the way he usually would have at being handled. For once in his long, contrary life, he didn't want to.

"I love having plans made for me like I can't make my own decisions," Sarah muttered, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Could be worse," Amelia tossed back as she continued working. "You could have an ancient archangel deciding your bedtime, too." She sent her mate a wink, making Camael roll his eyes.

Abraxos barked out a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "Forgive us for wanting to keep you breathing while the Morning Star's out there using your brand as a beacon. He'd use you as bait, leverage, or worse to get to us." He hauled a fallen shelf back onto its feet as he spoke, the motion rougher than it needed to be. "We've been doing this since before mortals had a word for civilization, and you two act like we're overreacting."

Sarah lifted her hands and nodded in agreement. “Fair enough. I still want to be included in decisions.”

“Leaving you out wasn’t intentional,” Camael informed her. “I didn’t ask Abraxos’s opinion, either. An army falls into chaos if no one is in charge. We can’t afford that right now.”

“She understands,” Amelia reassured her mate.

With that settled, the whole crew began moving like a machine somebody had finally oiled. The shop looked like a crime scene. Glass was scattered wall to wall. Shelves were toppled. Books were scattered across the floor like bodies. With nothing left to kill nearby, Abraxos turned his attention to cleanup instead. He hauled a bookcase upright and was working off some of the energy that had nowhere else to go. Behind him, the witches fanned out toward the dead spots.

"I’ll handle the door, but I’ll need help with the window," Amelia told Sarah as she threw a sheet of pale gold light across the busted doorframe. "Lucifer is likely to send more demons. It’ll take us both to fix the window so we’re not leaving a giant welcome mat."